Objectivism In Open Source Software
March 2014

I’ve been diving into some of the open source communities around the tools that we are using to build Farm At Hand lately in order to help make the tools that I use better.

Contributing to these projects and being a part of those communities feels so good. It gets back to the root of how and why I got into softare development in the first place.

What I like best about these communities is that they are so authentic and objective. There is no ego, nobody is getting paid, nobody depends on these projects in order to have a job, and anybody can contribute. Contributions come in the form of code, which is objectivism at its purist. The “who” part of a contribution is almost an afterthought. A metadata. The code itself is the focus.

It does not matter if you are a 10 year old girl or a 70 year old man. Age does not matter. Gender does not matter. Social status does not matter. You can send code for review and contribute. Nobody will judge you or stereotype you and you can gain respect purely by the quality of your work.

Spending a few minutes every day in these communities is such a breath of fresh air in contrast to the workplace where it is an everyday struggle to keep things objective. In the workplace there are politics, money, and lives at stake. The product is no longer the only thing that matters.

After seeing what groups of anonymous people can build together when they put differences, money, ego, politics, and emotions aside, I’m inspired to see how I can make the workplace more objective in order to help our team make a better product.